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Voices from Elysium

Art Songs By Aaron Copland, Henry Cowell, Miriam Gideon, Louise Talma, and Ruth Crawford Seeger

Paul Sperry (tenor), Phyllis Bryn-Julson (soprano), Beverly Morgan (mezzo), Constantine Cassolas (tenor)

Da Capo Chamber Players, Speculum Musicae

Catalogue No: NW80543
Label: New World
Length: 48 minutes

Usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days

Copland: As It Fell Upon a Day

Work length5:13

$1.00

$1.40

Phyllis Bryn-Julson
Da Capo Chamber Players

Gideon: Voices From Elysium

Work length12:06

$7.00

$9.80

Constantine Cassolas
Da Capo Chamber Players

The Swallow (Children's Song)

Track length2:10

$1.00

$1.40

Cicada

Track length2:10

$1.00

$1.40

Prayer to Hermes

Track length1:25

$1.00

$1.40

Epitaph of a Sailor

Track length2:10

$1.00

$1.40

Of the Sensual World

Track length1:00

$1.00

$1.40

Hesperos

Track length0:51

$1.00

$1.40

Rest

Track length2:20

$1.00

$1.40

Talma: Diadem

Work length15:12

$7.00

$9.80

Paul Sperry
Da Capo Chamber Players

Jade

Track length3:29

$1.00

$1.40

Aquamarine

Track length0:45

$1.00

$1.40

Ruby

Track length1:55

$1.00

$1.40

Topaz

Track length1:45

$1.00

$1.40

Diamond

Track length1:49

$1.00

$1.40

Sapphire

Track length3:25

$1.00

$1.40

Emerald

Track length2:04

$1.00

$1.40

Cowell, H: Vocalise

Work length6:49

$1.00

$1.40

Phyllis Bryn-Julson
Da Capo Chamber Players

Crawford Seeger: Three Songs

Work length9:27

$3.00

$4.20

Beverly Morgan
Speculum Musicae
Paul Lustig Dunkel

Rat Riddles

Track length3:30

$1.00

$1.40

Prayers of Steel

Track length1:50

$1.00

$1.40

In Tall Grass

Track length4:07

$1.00

$1.40

About
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Voices from Elysium is a rare and valuable survey of the American literature for voice with chamber accompaniment and includes some of the outstanding works in the genre. All exploit the greater coloristic and expressive possibilities offered by a chamber ensemble. Aaron Copland’s As It Fell Upon a Day is full of ingenious and charming details, alternating moods of merriment and shadow throughout the song's three sections. Henry Cowell’s lone contribution, Vocalise, owes a great deal to his explorations of Oriental music. It is essentially a charming, pretty virtuoso piece for coloratura soprano in the tradition of famous antecedents like the “Bell Song” from Lakmé.

Miriam Gideon(1906-1996) is best known for her wonderful but underappreciated vocal music. Voices from Elysium is a setting of seven poems translated from the Ancient Greek. The cycle is an evocation of Greek antiquity, with tender and whimsical reflections upon life and death, each with a sardonic twist. Gideon’s attentiveness to the words and their meaning is everywhere evident in these supple, subtle settings.

Louise Talma (1906-1996), like Miriam Gideon, also distinguished herself as a song composer. Diadem is a cycle of seven songs, each of which presents the characteristics and powers of a single stone: the stones together constitute a diadem, a glittering metaphor for all the finest human aspirations and qualities. Talma’s settings share the same virtues as Gideon's-an economy of expression and gesture wedded to a extraordinary sensitivity to text and texture that yields songs of a polished, jewel-like precision. Ruth Crawford Seeger’s (1901-1953) Three Songs+ set texts by Carl Sandburg in her characteristically stringent, compelling style.

Voices from Elysium

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